Salle académique

This is the ceiling of the Salle Académique, the original lecture hall of the University of Liège.

The latin writing is a commentary on the painting below. It reads something like 'This is how he personally crowns with laurels the hope of the sweet fatherland'. 'He' is King William I of the Netherlands, the guy in the centre of the painting. The text is a chronogram, if you add up the arithmetic values of the capital letters you get the date of completion of the Salle Académique, 1824. At the time Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.